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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Cooley Widens Lead - Harris Starts 'Steal The Election' Campaign

Results of votes cast in the November 2, 2010 Mid-Term Election mysteriously disappeared from the Secretary of State's website this evening, as earlier reports showed Attorney General candidate Steve Cooley had a 36,800 vote lead over opponent Kamala Harris.

All election result data vanished from the Secretary of State's website as of 11:20pm on Monday, November 8, 2010

During the course of Monday, November 8, 2010, data gleaned from the Secretary of State indicated the Cooley's lead at one point had fallen to 19,138 votes, but had then rallied to just over 40,000.

Centrist conservative blog "What Would Reagan Do?" conducted a detailed statistical analysis of uncounted votes and individual county voting trends, and projected that Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley would clinch the election as valid uncounted votes would break in favor of Cooley by 9,119, to add to the lead he originally held.

Some believe the "What Would Reagan Do?" projection to be overly conservative (no pun intended), and that Cooley would win by a much larger margin.

Curiously enough, support for the notion that Cooley's margin of victory could be bigger comes from the liberal democrat blog "Swing State Project," where they have been following the results by individually tabulating reports from all 58 counties. Today they reported that "Kamala Harris is actually down 62,258 votes thanks to a large number of votes of San Diego and Orange Counties."

Significantly, they also commented that "Santa Clara's reported an extra 86k votes since their last update. That means, well, Kamala doesn't stand to gain as much. Revised, we're saying Kamala will gain about 55,000 votes...leaving her about 7,300 short. Hate to pull the roller coaster on y'all, but I'd rather be realistic than unrealistically optimistic."

Further belief in democrat despondency at Harris's failure to capitalize on her "Female Obama" image comes from a panic email sent out via BarackObama.com:

An email from BarackObama.com urges "volunteer" attorneys, law students,
and those with legal knowledgeto "monitor the process," whatever that means.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Harris's panic email has garnered over 1,000 "volunteers" who may, or may not be allowed to observe or monitor the counting process, depending on local rules.

The Cooley campaign has retained experienced lawyers to monitor the process, and hopefully also keep a watchful eye on the BarackObama.com "volunteers" lest the temptation to "protect the vote" (which some might interpret as politically correct double-speak for "Steal the Election"), proves too much for them.

The results of the Mid-Term Election must be certified by December 3, 2010, and only then will candidates have the opportunity to challenge the results by requesting a recount. There is certainly much cause to suspect irregularities, given that Cooley appeared to poll poorly in Los Angeles County where he had previously bested democrat challengers handsomely three times in District Attorney elections.

Sounding a little desperate here Republicans! If he's ahead he's ahead. If the process is to be observed all the better. Surely you are not so panicked about your narrow lead to believe that the Secretary of State and the President of the United States are somehow in cahoots to jip Mr. Cooley out of his victory? If this state voted for Mr. Cooley in such great numbers and he beats Ms. Harris he will win. I'm not certain why the previous comment states that this race shouldn't event be close? This is a strongly blue state after all and Mr. Cooley does not represent the majority of Californians. Stay calm, and rejoice in democracy!

The Sec. of State site is back. It now (as of 9:12 AM) shows Cooley leading by 51,493 votes or 0.5%. Last night at about 5PM the posted difference was 40,980 votes (more or less, I'm quoting from memory), which is the number I saw at 7PM-ish.

My guess is that someone at the SOS office tried to post an update last evening and screwed it up, hence the blank pages overnight.

I'm a Democrat who, like all my friends, made an informed decision to ignore party lines and vote for Cooley (just as I have twice previously) because I believe he will do the job. It's not that I don't like Kamala Harris, she's very engaging, but I think the social reforms that she believes in are the job of the legislature, not the executive.

I think the fears expressed here about "stealing the election' are, as the blog indicates, somewhat satirical; a play on Bush-Gore 2000, and a little jab at the Move On Dot Org thing which seems to have moved on.

I would hate to see us dragged into a rerun of 2000 with whoever wins the election being dogged by accusations of election theft, but it does seem inevitable.

Cooley was 43,212 ahead at 7:25pm on Tuesday 11/9. It looks like Los Angeles County (where Cooley did very badly) still has 322,428 uncounted ballots. If they follow the same pattern of Cooley being 15 points behind Harris, that means Harris picks up 49,674 votes there. But, before Harris supporters get too carried away, there are many more uncounted ballots in areas that where heavily for Cooley - buy more than 20 points, so the outcome still looks like being a victory for Cooley.

In case you haven't noticed, Kamala Harris has been steadily chipping away at Cooley's lead, and has now overtaken him. She's 14,000 and change ahead, and it looks like the trend is continuing to go her way.

Cooley has taken an unexpectedly heavy hit in Los Angeles - his home county where he's won three times before. But this time it's different, probably because of his close association with City Attorney Carmen Trutanich who has been making the wrong kind of enemies since he took office.

Trutanich got Cooley to back his play on the medical marijuana problem, and that turned off a lot of voters who didn't think Cooley was nearly as extreme as Trutanich. For the most part Cooley had stayed out of the local politics, but when Trutanich dragged him in, Cooley lost a lot of support.

No republican has ever won a seat in Sacramento without carrying Los Angeles, and it looks like Cooley isn't going to be able to change that. I'm sure Cooley is wondering whether backing Trutanich was really worth the trouble.

Cooley's biggest mistake may have been associating himself with City Attorney Trutanich and accepting campaign funding from Karl Rove. Until now Cooley had always managed to present himself as being something of a moderate or centrist regardless of his GOP affiliations. The trust of California's Democrats and centrist Republicans such as myself may have been compromised by those associations.